![]() Like an old chef who once made very rich meals but now just wants to pick at sweets, the whole thing feels indulgent and kinda tired. I think Golden Coach, for Renoir, was totally cerebral. ![]() And I think it’s because Ophuls, like Fritz Lang in Mabuse, has a complex story that he really wants to tell. Its visual trickiness, its cleverness.ĭirector Max Ophuls, who’s appeared prior to Madame de… with two other movies on the List that I really enjoyed ( The Reckless Moment and, to my surprise, Letter from an Unknown Woman), does make a movie whose visual splendor roped me in despite a total and reflexive disinterest in the subject matter (period romances aren’t my cuppa tea, as I’ve addressed in reference to Camilleand Peter Ibbetson and Queen Christina and others). Mabuse, though, did hold my attention, at least in the beginning (when I didn’t know what the fuck was going on) by merit of its beauty. Certainly didn’t make up for the story’s tedium. I was bored by the story of the love triangle and I could barely follow what the characters were talking about, the whole thing seemed kinda pompous and dull-but the beauty and technical mastery didn’t endear me at all. I don’t wanna say that I hated Renoir’s last movie here, because I don’t think it’s fair for me to talk that way about something I’m being forced to watch (and yes, I know, nobody is technically forcing me to watch it, but in adherence to the Project, yes, I have to), but I certainly hated watching it. ![]() And I wanna dwell on that for a moment because I just addressed something similar in the piece about The Golden Coach, director Jean Renoir’s final appearance on the List. ![]() Roger Ebert is of course the source I keep going to as a guide, especially when it comes to movies where I don’t feel like I’m understanding the greatness, and in his review of Madame de… (of which both he and I are avid fans) he compares the movie to others where the visual splendor, its opulence, is its own kinda feast. ![]()
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